Published 4:00 am, Tuesday, January 4, 2005

Photo: Mark Costantini

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(l-r) Sandi Thompson and Dave Rucker, couple who survived the tsunami/earthquake. They are pictured here at home in the East Bay. Mark Costantini / The Chronicle MANDATORY CREDIT FOR PHOTOG AND SF CHRONICLE/ -MAGS OUT less

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(l-r) Sandi Thompson and Dave Rucker, couple who survived the tsunami/earthquake. They are pictured here at home in the East Bay. Mark Costantini / The Chronicle MANDATORY CREDIT FOR ... more

David Rucker and Sandi Thompson stood above the beach at a Ko Kho Khao Island resort in southern Thailand and stared for several minutes at the churning white line on the horizon.

The vacationing Berkeley residents watched as an atoll about a kilometer offshore -- where some guests had gone snorkeling that morning -- vanished beneath the advancing wall of water, which also consumed several long boats filled with tourists.

"We were pretty certain we were watching people die," Rucker said Monday, safely back home after surviving the Indian Ocean tsunami on Dec. 26. The couple urged people to donate to relief efforts, as they have.

Rucker and Thompson, who was videotaping the 10:30 a.m. scene a week ago, did not have a sense of impending personal danger until the water in their idyllic bay was sucked away, leaving boats that had been in 10 feet of water virtually beached.

Then came the noise.

"All of a sudden you heard like 100 jets," Thompson said Monday. "We didn't know how much trouble we were in."

The hotel manager began yelling for everyone to flee after he received a phone call alerting him that Phuket Island to the south had been devastated. Rucker and Thompson ran about 100 feet, then Thompson stopped to videotape panicked people running and the wave hitting the shore. At that point, Thompson stopped taping and ran for her life.

"Once we saw it hit, that's when we started to run, thinking we may actually be killed by this thing," Rucker said. The couple, who run a pet product design firm from their home in the Elmwood district, were quickly separated.

Thompson ran across a field to a flatbed truck where others pulled her to safety as water surged past her. The truck was lifted and floated into another much larger truck, which everybody climbed onto until the waters receded 20 minutes later.

Rucker ran into a nearby building and started to climb into the rafters but climbed down to help a dazed, elderly German woman. While they clung to a concrete column, the roiling water rose to the height of the woman's chest.

The tsunami ripped the resort apart, shattering the pier and crushing several rows of bungalows. About 100 tourists, most of them wearing only bathing suits, were driven to an inland hillside several hundred feet above sea level, where they spent a frigid night on banana leaves along with 200 Thai refugees. Some two dozen were injured; about eight were dead.

Thompson took a photograph of the scene that shows dozens of people on the grass. In the center is a woman in her 30s holding the hand of her mother, who had died of some sort of respiratory attack.

After several hours, Rucker went back to the resort to look for passports and other belongings. On the beach he found the body of a Frenchman who had gone for a walk shortly before the wave struck. The man's wife and daughter were back at the refugee camp.

Amid the death and destruction came tales of miraculous survival. A family of nine German tourists, including a 3-year-old child, were reported to have lived after the tsunami capsized their boat.

The next day, two Thai helicopters arrived at the refugee camp to transport the wounded and deliver supplies. After ferrying about 200 people, the choppers ran out of gas.

Rucker and Thompson heard that boats had arrived at the resort, and they rode a truck to the spot where the pier had stood. Carrying what little gear they had, they walked hundreds of feet through waist high-mud.

Once on the mainland, Rucker and Thompson got a ride to a hospital in Takua Pa, where Thompson received a tetanus shot for a cut on her foot. Outside the hospital, several severely injured people lay on gurneys awaiting surgery. Inside were many more, some with internal injuries and obviously broken bones.

Nearby, officials were using a temple as a temporary morgue. Thompson saw what she estimated to be 150 bodies.

The couple made their way to the bus station, but all the buses were full. They were told the next train would not leave until Sunday.

After spending a night with friends at a resort in the nearby Khao Sok National Park, the couple were able to get across the Thai peninsula to Suratthani, where they bought the last two tickets on a flight to Bangkok.

On Friday, they arrived home, relieved but anguished about the plight of the scores of people they had left behind.

"I really want people to hear our story so they will help out," Thompson said. "These people need money for medicine and supplies."

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